Word: alienate
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...shockingly powerful surf) and the human landscape (wet t-shirts, naked torsos, bulging muscles) are fun to look at. The storm scene, where several tidal waves bash the Albatross to bits, is fantastically directed. It is terrifying and electrifying, and not surprising from the director of "Blade Runner" and "Alien." However, Scott could have done without the lingering shots of the drowning victims...
...Alien life of any sort would make biologists ecstatic, of course, but it is the prospect of intelligent life that fires most people's imagination. "That final step from life to intelligent life is probably the longest shot of all," observes Des Marais. Even so, the small band of astronomers devoted to the search for broadcasts from high-tech extraterrestrials is encouraged: their 35-year quest has always rested on the assumption that planets exist outside Earth's solar system, and the fact that they have been proved right makes the search seem considerably less quixotic...
Historically, the Roman Catholic Church regarded any discussion of alien life as heresy. Speculating about other inhabited worlds was one reason philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. Belief that mankind has a special relationship with God is central to the monotheistic religions. The existence of alien beings, especially if they were further advanced than humans intellectually and spiritually, would disrupt this cozy view...
Christianity faces a peculiar problem in relation to the Incarnation. Was this event unique in the universe, as official doctrine insists, or did God take on alien flesh too? Is Christ the Saviour of humans alone, or of all intelligent beings in our galaxy and beyond...
...FIRST ALL BUT UNFAILING rule of foreign books about Japan is that they exult in the perspective of a bewildered outsider, not quite sure whether to be excited or exasperated by the science-fictive surfaces of that alien world. The second is that they find a focus for their mingled fascination and frustration in an unfathomable Japanese love object. The gracious and redeeming delight of Audrey Hepburn's Neck (Pocket Books; 290 pages; $21), a first novel by Alan Brown, an American, is that it turns all the standard tropes--and expectations--on their head by presenting Japan from...